


Enlightenment

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Persona 3, Persona 4, Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Akira is LIT, F/M, Gen, Idfic, M/M, Noncon Drug Use, Yet another Gorou redemption, fun facts about Japanese family records later, spoilers for November, what happened to P3 in P5, why is idfic so hard to write
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2019-08-29 11:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: The haziness of the room, the thick salt burn miles deep in every direction, the strange sensation of fuzzy glass in front of his brain… how was this winning?The light overhead flickered and burned a color out, turning dim and green.  Like soup.  Weird soup, all salty-metallic with too many old greens and chicken bones, lukewarm and clammy when it spilled on you...Winning.  He’d been… been thinking about... winning… and how the blood in his mouth tasted like bad soup?  Green sea soup.  Bad lightbulbs.… something was wrong with that thought...





	1. Chapter 1

Sae had taken the phone with her.

Akira… couldn’t quite remember, but the empty spot on the table, the faint brushstroke gleam of buff marks in the steel, that was.  That was. Good. Important.

(the pain had become a bathwater ocean to drift deep within... was this the sea of souls shadows came from...?  dark and wavering...?)

If only he could remember why.  They. Why would they have left him his phone.  Why was it so important it wasn’t there. It shouldn’t be there.  But he’d…

won.

The haziness of the room, the thick salt burn miles deep in every direction, the strange sensation of fuzzy glass in front of his brain… how was this winning?

The light overhead flickered and burned a color out, turning dim and green.  Like soup. Weird soup, all salty-metallic with too many old greens and chicken bones, lukewarm and clammy when it spilled on you...

Winning.  He’d been… been thinking about... winning… and how the blood in his mouth tasted like bad soup?  Green sea soup. Bad lightbulbs.

… something was wrong with that thought...

The door opened.

Akira managed to drag his eyes up from the splash of dark blood on the table.  Right, that would be. Skull was supposed to… and Fox…

Tea blond.  Noir…? No, she didn’t wear olive green.  The hair was flat. No fancy hat. Also, male, kind of a big clue… oh.

_Oh_.

That was why the phone was important.

Crow.  Corou. Gorou.  You aren’t supposed to be here.

Gorou’s intent expression cracked.  “Well,” he said, holstering his gun.  “At least we expected you’d need an ambulance.”

But Gorou wasn’t supposed to be here.  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. The phone was gone.  They’d won. This wasn’t… wasn't...

Gorou leaned out the door, and although his eyes stayed pinned to Akira he called out to someone else.  "Oyaji!" But... Gorou didn't have a family... "Hurry up with that Dia!"

"Coming."  A premature?-gray guy built like a tank poked his head into the room.  “Got a chair just in case,” he said, voice soft and rumbling deep through Akira’s head.  The man pushed a bloodstained rolly office chair through the door, then glanced at Akira, scowled, and pulled out a gun.

Akira's reflexive flinch blinded him with boiling hot pain, but he heard the shot.

" _Diarahan_."

Wouldn't work, Akira was dead, dead and still.. still... thinking...?  Seeing...? Breathing air instead of bloodwater as a Persona, massive and pale, faded from view above the gray man's head.

Gray holstered a gun that had been aimed at his own face rather than Akira's.

Wha...?

Gray knelt and reached for him.  This time Akira's back hit the chair when he flinched away from Gray's hands.

"Hey, easy," he said quietly, then, "Look," (look at what?) and dragged one partially-bandaged finger back and forth across Akira's vision.  Back and forth... back and forth... "He's not tracking. They put him on something, I think."

Gorou groaned.  "I knew we should've brought Teddie."

"Yeah."  Gray stood and hooked the office chair over.  “We can tie him on," he told Gorou, "but that’ll slow us down if we have to get him out and dump it.”

“Do it,” Gorou said sharply.  “It’s five kilos, we won’t need to abandon it.”

A third guy, a couple of years younger than the first and built even larger, ducked into the room.  “They’re startin’ to form outside,” he said. For some reason, he was wearing tinted sunglasses at night.  Akira’s eyes skidded past the sunglasses and caught on a Junes mascot barrette holding the guy’s hair out of his face.  "What's takin' so long?"

"Drugs," Gray said succinctly.  "Give me the rope, we need the chair after all."

"Hell."  Barrette dug a coil of shimmering white rope from... somewhere... and reached for a glowing blue card in the air.  "I'll hold 'em off. Incoming!"

A gloppy black lump oozed through the door and snarled.

Akira flopped his fingers at his face.  Name. He needed... name.

"Robin Hood!" Gorou snapped over another gunshot.

Not that one.  Arson. ... No...?  Not. He'd had other masks on.  Other. Ran...da? No, that wasn't quite... there was another letter in there somewhere...  Power. He'd had... Power. With its wiggly horns and the octopus on its shield. Black crow wings.  Fox had sketched a chibi of it the other day, trying to cheer Akira up, and put a takoyaki on the shield.

He blinked, and found the world had tilted on him.  Something had him strapped to a padded chair, swaying bouncing in Gray and Barrette's hands as they climbed stairs.  Soft rope, he found, flopping at a large lumpy knot on his chest. The knot had loops around his wrists, so his hand didn't slither off his body and onto the floor to be stepped on.

"Back with us?" Barrette asked.

Heh.  Slither.  Crow should've worn green.  Not the weird-lightbulbs ugly one.  Hogwarts. Sneaky smart. Not good.

"Close enough," Barrette muttered.  The world spun and righted itself to a soup-green empty police station.  Akira knew those. Ugly. Bad coffee. Worse people. But no people here now, which was good, as they zoomed through all hell-on-wheels and suns out.  Guns out.

Gorou why do you need a gun.  No.

Another goopy snarl, and another puddly tar thing attacked.  Burst into Shadows like none Akira had ever seen before, stone arms carrying swords, floating red knights.  And Gorou...

Gorou shot himself in the heart.

" _CROW!"_

No no no no no no nononononono

Gorou.  Still standing.  Loki this time, Loki floating above him, too large for the hallway, too large for Gorou to.  to. not? die?

Maybe the green world had broken guns.  Like the red one had working fakes. Opposites.  Sneaky world. Gorou world. Crow family and old-man hair and shooty Dia and Junes barrettes.  Slime-stained crazed-glass doors that didn't break when they shoved through.

Green moon.  More snarly tar.  Clanky chain rattle.  Akira's head rolled, and he looked for blue.  Badplace twins...? Green was almost blue. Rattle rattle.  Clang the bars. Pay attention, inmate.

Pay attention.

_It's the Reaper!_ a woman gasped, crackly static zappy.   _It's between us-- ten meters, closing in on you, sending backup now!  Three minutes!_

"Got it, Juno," Gorou said, tight and unhappy.  Crow no. "Can you guys hold out three minutes?"

"Gonna have to," Gray said.

The world rolled upright, and gravity kept going while the street stayed put.  Barrette had the card out again, blue sparkle, bright pale, spinny halfmask... twoface mask... sparkle blue...

... butterfly blue...

" _T_ _akeji Zaiten!_ "

The blue was gone.

A piece of Mementos drifted, towering above their heads.  Blood and black, steel and bone, chains rattling.

"... _scream_..." it breathed, voice buzzing in and out.

Light.

Explosions.

Gorou was screaming.  Gorou was... Gorou was... he needed his mask, where was his mask?  Thou art I, I am thy mask, and the wavery greenmoon world had stolen them all, torn a strip of Mementos off and the screaming... the screaming...

A speck of light drifted across Akira's vision.

Something.  Something was.  Watching.

Blue and gold.  Blue and white. Blue and black.  Gold eyes, something _other_ , something--

\-- _powerful_ \--

Akira had no mask.  His fingers curled under.  No masks here. No masks, but...

(an Evoker)

... if you could convince yourself it was a gun...

(will you die here...?)

... and guns were broken, were magic, were...

... were...

_Per_

(accept all responsibility)

_so_

(goodbye now)

_na_

A fall of blue hair carved to marble.  Blank stone under graven half-lids.

_It's my world_ , that power said.

A teardrop fell from a stone eye.

_I'm sorry, I can't let it fall apart behind my back._

It wasn't Arsene.  Power surged through Akira's veins, searing and fizzy-sharp, tasting of cold ashes in his throat, the last echoing thrum of a note in dead air.

Gorou was down.  Gray was down. Barrette had fallen to one knee, his Persona blocking most of Akira's view.  Footsteps slapped quickly in the distance, shouting, too far away.

Akira brought his single finger up to his temple.  Gun. Gun like Gorou's. Like Gray's. Drop his thumb, fire.

The night was so _bright_.

" _Messiah_."


	2. Chapter 2

Akihiko couldn't breathe past the lump in his throat.

Messiah.   _Messiah_ .  Minato's last Persona, bright and shining white and _still bearing Minato's face_ .   _How--_?  How had this kid summoned it?

Minato looked so damn young.  He hadn't aged a day.

Someone yanked at his arm as Messiah faded away.  Gorou. Gorou, who wouldn't know, had never had a chance to see the pictures...

"Come on, Oyaji," Gorou hissed, gaze pinned to the boy fallen limp in the office chair.  Kanji scooped Akira up, chair and all, the boy's head lolling bonelessly on one heavily-muscled arm.

Akihiko managed to get to his feet, to stumble into a run with Gorou, reaching their backup just seconds later.  Junpei and Ken had the same pale, wild-eyed expression Akihiko knew was on his own face; Yukiko didn't, but then she didn't _know--_ she crushed her card with a sharp snap of "Salvation!", which at least took the ache and imbalance away from Akihiko physically.

Emotionally...

Well.

"He's not waking up," Gorou muttered.

Gorou now.  Heartache later.  "He just channeled something at least twice as strong as he can probably handle," Ahikiko managed to say.  Just like Minato had, that very first Shadow battle he'd fought. "He'll probably be out cold for a week." Just like Minato.

Heartache. _Later_. Dammit.

They had the ambulance idling at a gas station, disguised as a delivery van with its back doors sitting open.  Fuuka, in pale delivery overalls, stood next to the doors, Juno too large to fit inside even without all the medical equipment there.  Tears ran down her cheeks, but she kept Juno up even as Kanji hauled Akira into the van. He untied Akira from the chair as Junpei dragged Akihiko in, then Kanji jumped out, taking the chair with him, and grabbed the door.

"Wait," Akihiko managed.  He leaned forward, catching himself on the handle so he wouldn't fall on Akira, and met Gorou's eyes.  "Be careful."

As always, though not nearly often enough, Gorou pulled up a gentle smile that didn't reach his eyes.  "Say hi to her for me." _No promises_.

_Please don't let this be the last time_ , Akihiko thought, also as always, and shut the door.

The van rocked as Fuuka got into the front seat, then she shut her door, and the faint light streaming in through the front windows went white.  Daylight. Mission complete.

Their part, at least.  


-0-0-0  


Navi: Guys, GUYS, I NEVER GOT THE PING.  DDD:  


When Haru arrived, the rest of the team was sitting in a tense, fretful silence at their booth in the cafe.  Futaba was huddled in a corner surprisingly near the door, glasses white with the glow off her phone, clutched in a white-knuckled grip.  Mona had taken up residence on Ryuuji's lap, which was perhaps the only thing keeping Skull silent... a point which was necessary, Haru belatedly realized, because there was one other customer in the cafe.  The self-acclaimed critic who liked the far back corner.

He caught her eye as she entered, and Haru quickly looked away.  She did not want to hear his latest denigrating opinion, not now.

"He's been there for _three hours_ ," Ann hissed sotto voce as Haru squished into the booth next to her.

So since before school let out.  He would know that Akira-- that the attic was unoccupied, then, so they couldn't go up.  Not without him noticing the rudeness and, given the way he behaved, complaining about it to all and sundry.  The risk...

But then how could they discuss anything?  What could they _do_?

"Oh good, you're all here," the critic abruptly said, and a jolt of terror ran down Haru's spine.  She saw it reflected in the others, going stiff (Makoto) or bolt upright (Ryuuji) or shrinking away (Futaba).  Crow's goons were going to pounce any moment now, they were all done for, Joker was--

"Hey now--" Soujirou protested sharply, as the critic stood and stepped up next to their booth.

"First off, I owe you an apology," the critic informed Futaba.  Haru blinked. Futaba, pale and coiled tensely, blinked too. "There's no excuse for what I said a couple months back," he continued, a trace of Osaka seeping into his accent.  "It was creepy and gross, and all I can say is I was running asshole.exe." Hip cocking under one hand, the man lifted the other vaguely towards his ear, and he tipped his head.  "Secondly... yeah. Extraction's complete, they're filing your guy as Arisato Akira at a private hospital."

... What?

"What?" Ryuuji asked blankly.

"He's okay?" Ann asked, pressing urgently against Haru.  "He's _safe?_ "

Makoto frowned.  "Who _are_ you?"

The man winked, cheerful and girlish.  "Kirijo Security: Anti-Shadow Division.  Codename Sappho."

"Your disguise is most striking," Yuusuke said.

Sappho grinned.  "Thanks. I designed it myself."  Then he straightened his shoulders and returned to masculine body language.  "Not sure what your play was gonna be, and so, like, sorry to derail it, but the reports I'm getting say that guy needs the hospitalization.  Drugs, one heck of a beatdown, and... huh. Total SP wipeout. The bosses are kinda freaked, chatter on the line's that he summoned something too big for him."

So he... he knew.  He was a Persona-user, or knew them, or knew something about the Metaverse--?  Where had he (they?) _been_ all these months?  Years?

Futaba's phone slid from lax hands, and she leaned forward, intent and narrow-eyed.  " _What_ are you?" she asked.  "You're getting real-time updates, you aren't wearing a bluetooth..."  Sappho's bright grin widened. "... You were running asshole.exe as _actual software?_ "

"Kid, you're as bright as your mom."  Futaba twitched. "Sorry. But I knew her, and she's... well, kinda exactly why I'm here."  Sappho ran a hand through his short hair, then made a face and leaned against the bar. "Mind if I...?" he asked, gesturing at himself.

Haru had no idea what he was asking.  And then Sappho shimmered, becoming an albino girl no older than she herself was, startling yelps from half the group.

"Look more like a Sappho now, yeah?" she asked, in full Osaka dialect.  "So yeah. Isshiki Wakaba was one heck of a great scientist, always bright an' into the work, an' when she got weird in those last couple of weeks... well, it coulda just been she wasn't feeling well, right, an' then she fainted in the street or whatever it was, all kinda tragic but normal.

"An' then her research vanished, an' that _stupid_ stunt at the funeral."  Sappho grimaced. "Kinda made it obvious what happened, an' that someone was targeting her genius kid to stay outta it.  So on the one hand, y'can't go an' do anything that'll make that whoever think the kid knows something, right? But on the other, y'can't just throw the kid out in the cold an' hope they don't bother to go after her since you aren't lookin'.

"Enter me."  Sappho shrugged, raised her hands to gesture at herself.  "I was _built_ for covert.  A bit of poking at bureaucrats, snap up an unwanted studio apartment a block over, and you've got a new regular at a great little coffeeshop watching for evil ninja mooks."

That... well, it made _sense_ , but...

"So where've you _been_?" Ryuuji blurted.  "It's been like two years of this bullshi--!"

"Gathering evidence," Sappho replied flatly.  "Minimizing the damages as best we could. I'm sorry about your father, by the way," she told Haru.  "We had people right there to sneak him away and fake his death, but he was poisoned first."

"That..."  Haru couldn't breathe.  "That... wasn't a shelling?  Wasn't--?"  _Crow?_

Sappho shook her head.  "Timing that perfect that he seems to shell on live tv?  The chief jerk needs control too much to leave it to chance.  We don't know how he got the poison past us, but--"

"Crow," Haru interrupted.  It had to be. No one would be protecting against a teenager, and if you just left the Metaverse at the right spot in the Palace, surely you'd come out right in Father's office--

"Akechi-kun?  Nope."

No.  But... no, it had to be, he was... they'd been counting on his betrayal for the plan to work, he had to be... he'd killed her father, he'd killed Futaba's mother, he'd been exploiting Palaces and hurting people for... for years...

How had they known how to get Joker out?   _Where_ to get Joker out?

Makoto sucked in a breath.  " _He's_ your agent.  Isn't he." Ryuuji made a sound of complete incomprehension, one that mirrored Haru's confusion far too well, and Makoto continued, "He's the best placed to find out all the missions, all the Metaverse assignments that would -- should -- be horrific tragedies."  Her eyes narrowed. "Like the subway in April."

Sappho nodded.  "High-speed underground crash, millions in damages, hundreds of injuries."  Yes, and--?  "No deaths."

... Why had Haru never noticed how impossible that was?

"... I see."  Makoto looked around at the rest of the team, gaze measuring, then gestured to the barstools.  "I think you'd better take a seat and start over at the beginning."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh... enter Labrys, from P4: Arena. Because WHY NOT. If you didn't see Arena, basically she's one of Aigis' fellow bots, but with hologram tech for infiltration and a strong Osaka accent from clicking the language settings wrong during install. She has silver hair and red eyes, so yeah, would kinda read as albino.


	3. Chapter 3

_Shinjuku, Tokyo: October 20XV_

 

The knock on Gorou's door was entirely unprecedented.  So was the low voice that called out, "Delivery."

Gorou frowned, even as he got up and padded the couple of steps over to the genkan.  "Coming," he replied, stepping down into his shoes and digging his hanko out of the little bag he stored odds and ends in.  The stamp was generic and cheap, 'Akechi' a lucky find in a secondhand shop, and the plastic handle was cracked down the middle.  Gorou carefully turned the stamp so the crack was hidden from casual view, though that made his signature somewhat lopsided. Better to look distracted than poor.

It didn't seem likely that Shidou would be sending something by physical, analog means.  He liked distance, liked how his pet hacker could erase his tracks in a way that a true paper trail always left behind.  But maybe... maybe...?

"I didn't order anything," Gorou said even as he warily opened the door.  The deliveryman was shorter than him, slender and white-clad, face half-hidden by the tilt of his hat as he looked at a reciept.

"Akechi Gorou, apartment 506?"  He lifted the plastic bag, heavy with telltale laminate-paper boxes, sending the scents of beef and ginger wafting up.  "Two beefbowl, prepaid?"

If _only_ .  "I'm sorry." It smelled so good, and it was already paid for, but the _risk--_ prepaid anything always came with strings attached, and who knew else what was in the bowls? "I really didn't order that."

"I know," the deliveryman said, tipping his hat up with his thumb.  Shirogane Naoto gave Gorou a stern, knowing look from under the brim.  "I think we'd best discuss matters inside. Don't you think?"

_Oh shit._

Numbly, Gorou stumbled back, letting _Shirogane Naoto_ in.  She. She had to...  There were only two reasons for her to be here, and meeting a rising new detective didn't require a disguise or coming to his place.  So she couldn't be just here to meet him.

She _knew_.  About Isshiki Wakaba.  She had to.

Shirogane put the bags onto his low table, seating herself on the bare floor like the prince the media had declared her years ago, then gestured at the other side for Gorou to sit.

He did, vaguely noting that she'd allowed him his one floor cushion instead of taking it for herself as was proper for the guest and elder, and watched in tense silence as she took the topmost box off the stack of takeout.

It was an oddly flat box, a third item in a list of two, and when she opened it there was a strange little technological device that seemed only about half-built, all tubing and coiled wiring and a little flickering light.  She pressed the lone button atop what housing there was, and the flickering light turned green. So did the weak sunlight streaming in through the window, even as all the rest of Gorou's lights died. Including his phone, sitting innocuously on the corner of the table and now offering no Metaverse escape.

There was a splash of something dark up the wall behind Shirogane's head.  Gorou instinctively recoiled from the bone-deep understanding that it was blood.

Shirogane folded her hands on the table and leaned forward.  "You're a hard man to find, Akechi Gorou," she informed him.

He dredged up his pleasant smile, the one that kept adults placated.  "Am I?" he managed to ask mildly. "I don't particularly try to be."

"In this case, I think you do."

Loki slipped from Gorou's mental fingers like water before Gorou quite realized he'd grabbed for him at all.

Shirogane just raised an eyebrow, then a hand, and a lick of blue fire spiraled up from her palm, flattening out towards a rectangular shape.  Her power levels spiked, blindingly incomprehensible to what sense of Shadows Gorou had.

No no no he was _not_ challenging that.

Shirogane's fire died, taking the power with it, and she dropped her hand calmly.  "Never run into another Persona user before?" she asked.

"N-no."

"That's not surprising," she told him.  "We haven't yet figured out what layer of this other world you're inducing Apathy Syndrome from, but it--"

"Inducing _what_ ?"  There was a _word_ for what he'd done?

She paused.  "... Ah. You may have been too young to recall.  There was an outbreak -- a mostly natural one -- of mass catatonia back in 2009.  The topic is a bit long to get into here. But I digress... I wanted to ask you," she folded her arms on the table's scratched surface, "just how much do you know about what you've been doing?  About what your power is?"

... How much did he...?  How much was there _to_ know?  Other than, apparently, that there were more subdimensions of the world than the ones he'd found, that his power _wasn't_ unique after all, that there was a _diagnosis_ for what he'd done to Isshiki, or at least that there would've been something to diagnose if she hadn't thrown herself into traffic and died...  "It's called Persona," Gorou began slowly, with the wretched, sinking feeling that he'd just been called up to the matron's office to account for a book someone else had torn.  The same feeling television assured him most children felt for a test they hadn't studied for. "It can be used against monsters, and... and the people who don't realize they're personas, who turn into monsters when you provoke them... and it only works in the other world."  He paused, huffed a bit of casual amusement that came out a shade too bitter, and added, "And apparently, that other people have it."

Shirogane politely waited a moment for Gorou to add anything, then her expression flickered dark before going neutral once more.  "Well. That's about as much as I'd had figured out at your age myself. Granted, I was the last to awaken in my set of Persona users, but even then it took several more months before we happened to make contact with a previous group and get access to their information and research."

Research.  Because of course there was research.

"Including Isshiki Wakaba's."

... _oh_.

Far too much suddenly made sense.  Shirogane being a Persona user wasn't mere chance, a lucky one-in-millions shot that her employers for Isshiki's case had picked her and she'd had an extra world to go searching in.  Isshiki's employers were active researchers, possibly even Persona users themselves. Shirogane may well have been a resource, at least an interview subject, for Isshiki's work.

And with Shidou having Gorou available, having a chance to grab power from that other world... well.  He was absolutely vile to any hint of opposition or competition. No wonder he'd sent Gorou against Isshiki.

No wonder he'd wanted a kill, instead of the frenzies Gorou'd always done before.

"... I had no idea who she was," Gorou managed to say.  "Or what it would _do_ ."  Even if it was painfully obvious in hindsight.  Why _wouldn't_ killing the persona-monster kill the person in reality?  Why on earth had he ever thought it would just distract Isshiki from her job?  How stupid could he possibly _be_?

Shirogane studied him for a long moment.  "You know, I think I believe you." She what?  "Which would beg the question, who told you to go after her?"

"... Why do I think you have a suspect for that too, already?" Gorou asked.  Shirogane raised an eyebrow, but waited. "You _do_.  But..."  But what?

If Shirogane was here, instead of at Shidou's office...  "You aren't confronting or arresting him. You came to _me_."

Now, why would she do that?  If they arrested Gorou, they'd alert Shidou that they were on to him.  And if they could get Shidou, they'd send someone else, someone of much lower status, to get Gorou.  They wouldn't waste Shirogane on him, nor would whoever they sent bother much with being covert or talking to him.

"... You can't get him.  You don't have the evidence... you need..." What?   _Oh_.  "... You need someone on the inside."

Shirogane winced.  "I am _supposed_ to be offering a chance to get you _out_."

Store him in some obscure mountain town, useless and unwanted, having to fake lower grades and pretend to be _normal_ when he wasn't even sure what that _was_ ?  Watch Shidou crowing on the news as he rose through ordinary means, completely untouchable once more?  Give up after all he'd already done? Absolutely not. "No," Gorou said. "I'm already on the inside. I'm the one person who has to know all about the missions in the other world, the targets and times and everything."  It felt like dawn rising in his heart. "You _need_ me."

"You're _fifteen_."

"So," Gorou said ruthlessly, "were you."

 

-0-0-0

 

Shirogane had taken the odd greenlit-world device off after that, pocketing it and leaving with nothing more than a tip of her hat and a promise to take the matter to her manager -- words that any eavesdropper would presume to be about the mistaken restaurant order.

She left both beefbowls for him.

It took Gorou nearly two full days to eat them, half per meal for dinner and breakfast, and he spent both nights between feeling oddly full and too warm everywhere.  The second night, he even unbuttoned his top shirt a bit and rolled up the sleeves, and tied his hair back with a shoelace for lack of rubber bands.

He didn't expect to receive any phone calls from Shirogane, much less any incidental public encounters, so when the world shifted greenlit unannounced outside Gorou's cram school in Akihabara, he wasn't particularly surprised by the event.  By the sudden mass of upright coffins crowding the street around him, on the other hand, yes. Gorou barely managed not to walk right into the one in front of him, which had been a woman yammering away on her cell phone two seconds earlier.

"What the--?!"

Gorou spun, looking for ambushers (or a path out, which seemed much less likely), and found that a man with a baseball cap and matching duffel bag was leaning against the door to the konbini a couple meters away.  He tipped up his cap and offered Gorou a friendly, toothy grin. "Hey, dude. Got time for a meeting?"

The obvious answer was 'yes, of course, you've gone to so much trouble'.  Gorou decided to test it. "Not really," he demurred, gesturing to his school satchel.  "Cram school, you see."

The man's grin widened.  "Lucky for you, time's broke in here.  If y'really gotta go, though, I mean, it's okay but it'll probably be a good coupla weeks before we can try again."

Ah.  That was... oddly accepting.  Polite? Gorou wasn't sure what word applied here.  "Oh, _well_ , if time's broken." Shirogane had neglected to mention _that_ part of this world.  "Are you the, ah, manager, then?"

"Me?" the man said.  "Heck no. I'm more snack runs than boss material.  See, me," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder, "konbini.  The boss is in the limo at the corner."

There was, indeed, a very expensive-looking black town car sitting second in line across the street, waiting with a dead motor for a light that was out.  Gorou tried not to make it too obvious that he was trying to keep Baseball-Cap in his field of vision, as he edged past standing coffins and picked his way around the splattered edges of a spray of blood near the crosswalk.

The town car's back windows weren't fully closed, a two-centimeter gap visible at the top where the windows didn't reflect Gorou's distorted face like a dark mirror.

Well.  Nothing for it, then, but to open the door and slide into the empty bench seat in the back.  Gorou did so, then shut the door behind him, and only then risked looking up to see his erstwhile host.

Gorou blinked.

Across from him were two young women.

The younger of the pair looked only a year or two older than him, at best.  She wore a black business skirt-suit that somehow screamed 'security force', with odd bulk at her shoulders and wrists that were probably weapons, and a distinctly non-regulation headband controlling short, foreign-blonde hair.  The headband covered her ears -- hearing aids, perhaps? -- and were further kept in place by the high collar of some sort of neck kevlar. If Gorou had to guess.

She smiled, and the expression was far too practiced to be natural.

At least she looked... well taken care of.  For an underage bodyguard.

The woman, the boss, directly in front of Gorou, was much warmer.  For a certain calculated degree of warmth. She seemed to be in her early twenties, with long reddish curls spilling over one shoulder all salon-perfect, and manicured hands folded in her lap.

There was no sign of a wedding or even engagement ring, which was a bit of a surprise at her age and obvious social class.

"Greetings," the bodyguard said, her voice soft and slightly too modulated.  "This is Kirijo Mitsuru."

Kirijo.

Oh shit.

(Gorou _knew_ he should've tried to look up Isshiki's employer.  If only he'd dared risk Shidou's hacker finding out, and Shidou wondering why he was looking.)

"I am Aigis," the girl continued, the lack of a family name _not reassuring Gorou at all_.  "Kirijo-sama, this is Akechi Gorou."

"... A pleasure," Gorou lied.

Kirijo's slight smile went wry.  "We've heard much about you, Akechi-san," she said.  "Would you mind if we forego the pleasantries, though?  It's not safe to spend too long on this side of reality."

What could he honestly say to that?  "... Certainly, Kirijo-sama."

"-San will do.  There aren't nearly enough of us Persona-users to have that strict of a hierarchy."  She leaned forward intently, her hair falling loose. "I understand you've offered to remain in place but under our employ, rather than accept an extraction."

"Yes, Kirijo... san."

"If I may be frank, I dislike the entire notion," she informed him.  "I awakened my Persona when I was scarcely eight years old. I spent most of my formative years as a front-line soldier, many of them alone, and I have been embroiled in corporate politics for longer.  None of that is a life I would wish on anyone."

"But you need to," Gorou replied, barely stifling the protest enough to make it come out mild.

Her gaze fell.  "But I need to," she echoed, before looking back up.  "You've been in this alone long enough to understand what it entails.  Isshiki will not be the first you're ordered to kill."

That hit home.  Gorou... hadn't wanted to think about that.

But it was true, wasn't it.

"We can arrange to fake their deaths," Aigis said into the silence, unfazed.  "Much as we were offering to you."

"We have the resources," Kirijo agreed.  "Even if That Man wants a person's body as evidence, we can create a fake.  We can create employment opportunities and paperwork as needed, and we have properties across Japan, as well as in many places around the world, if necessary."  She quirked a smile. "Consider it privatized witness protection."

Well.  That was.  One way to put it.

(Why was Gorou having a flashback to _Steel Man_ ?  He didn't even much like that series.   _The Revengers_ was fine, but Stack was a jerk.)

"... Agreed," Gorou said.  Really, what else could he do?

Kirijo cast an unreadable glance at Aigis, but Aigis didn't look back.  She merely lifted one gloved hand and said, "Please hold out your phone."  Gorou did, pretending they didn't notice it was one of the tiny free ones that came with the cheapest phone contracts, and Aigis stretched her fingertips out to hover over the screen.

"I am uploading backup agents to your contact list," Aigis informed him, as the screen flickered under her hand untouched.  "Their identities are encrypted and you have not met most of them yet. We will ensure that at least one person in town is always available for you."  Just for him? "Note that they are all Persona users, and should be capable in the other world if you require it. Please arrange a meeting with Juno at your earliest convenience to gain access to your stipend."

"... Stipend?"

Kirijo huffed lightly.  "I'm not about to force you to work for free."

Why not?  Shidou did.  That's just how adults _were_.

Kirijo rested one delicate hand on his shoulder, and Gorou froze.  "Akechi-san. We will do our best to get you through this. I hope someday you can forgive me for it."

Aigis pulled away.  "Kirijo-sama, the Shadows are beginning to develop outside."

Kirijo inclined her head, let go, and sat back.  "I'm afraid our time is up. Be careful out there, and I hope to see you again."

Gorou bowed as best he could, head spinning.  "Have a good evening, Kirijo-san." And he fled.

The world turned to daylight once he was fully back upon the sidewalk.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juno = Fuuka
> 
> Also, I have a huge Persona 3 OTP. It is not being subtle anymore.

_ Shinjuku, Tokyo: February, 20XW _

 

There was a bright, familiar beacon of premature gray half-hidden among the gym's free weights.  Gorou could just barely see it from the top of the bouldering wall, after he pulled himself up onto the small victory platform to catch his breath.

Sanada Akihiko had just shown up at Gorou's gym one day in mid-November, about three weeks after Gorou had been reluctantly hired by Kirijo-san.  Gorou had recognized him easily, and just as easily pretended not to, because two weeks before Akihiko had appeared at the gym, a shy young woman had "accidentally" knocked into Gorou at a coffeeshop.  When he knelt to help pick up their dropped items -- mostly to keep her from stealing his phone -- the world went green.

"Ah," Gorou had said.  "Juno, I presume."

The young lady smiled sweetly.  "Please pardon the interruption."  She plucked a compact off the floor, opening it to reveal electronics rather than makeup.  "If you could swipe your card, I have your account ready. The PIN's 1653. Don't forget it!"

Gorou had swiped, Juno had returned the compact to its place on the floor, and reality reappeared for them to gather up her things and send her on her way.

Five days after that, Juno scheduled Gorou for DH Training, and there... there he'd met Akihiko.  And recieved a crash course in subdimensional physics, the Dark Hour and tv worlds, tidbits of Kirijo Group's stained history, and his own Evoker when trying to pull out his mask didn't work.

"Was kinda hoping it would," Akihiko -- Sanada, those first couple of months -- had said quietly.  "Havin' to watch your teammates use 'em..." But he'd just shaken his head and left it at that.

(It wasn't until well into January, after a power outage had kept Gorou up all night, and the dark circles under Akihiko and Mitsuru's eyes on Skype showed they'd done the same, that Akihiko had finished the thought.  "Nightmares," he said succinctly.

Then the beefbowl and space heater they'd sent had arrived, and they'd moved on to better topics, but Gorou remembered that on the bad nights.  Normal, strong adults had nightmares too. He wasn't weak for having his own.)

So Gorou wasn't surprised to see Akihiko working with the free weights at his gym.  It was comfortable by now, almost... encouraging... having someone who knew him and wasn't judging him there.

It was a surprise, however, when Gorou came down from the wall for the last time a bit later, put the safety harness away, and found Akihiko following him into the locker room.  They'd never risked using the door at the same time, so as not to give the impression that they were associated with each other, so why now...?

"Saw you on the wall," Akihiko said as he pulled his sweaty T-shirt off.  He shook out his hair, sticking up in wet spikes everywhere, and offered a small grin.  "Not bad, kid."

Gorou shrugged.  "It's mostly just focus.  Plan your route and take it one rock at a time."

"Ain't that life.  Good way to live it."  Akihiko sniffed at himself, and his grin turned sheepish.  "My girl's picking me up. I probably oughta shower."

Kirijo was coming here?  "Rinse off, at least," Gorou said, managing to hide his surprise.  The  _ risk _ ...

"Yeah.  Good luck with the rocks!" Akihiko said, and headed over to the showers.

Huh.

Gorou marked the security van idling at the end of the alley when he went to unlock his bike, and made sure to remember his position holding the lock when the Dark Hour fell.

He straightened, smiled politely at Akihiko coming out of the gym, then turned to the van.  Its back door opened, revealing a flat floor where all the seats had been taken out, and Kirijo Mitsuru seated against the tire well trying not to look like a queen.

She had not been dressed by Junpei today, Gorou noted, but she'd certainly tried to match his skill in dressing her incognito.  She'd only managed 'Urban Winter Collection Catalog 20XV' instead of 'regular girl', all in tan and black, but still. Once you'd seen Kirijo Mitsuru dressed by Junpei, cuddled up to Akihiko in the quirky concrete depths of an overpass and arguing the merits of different flavors of ramen while trying to steal bites of his tempura bowl, even 'Urban Winter Collection' wasn't intimidating.

"Hello, Kirijo-san," Gorou said.  "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

She smiled warmly.  "Akechi-kun. It's been a while."  Akihiko climbed up into the van next to her, and she patted what space was left for Gorou to take.

"Couple things," Akihiko said, once Gorou had.  "First off, I'm gonna have to change gyms pretty soon."  Gorou swiftly hid his dismay. He hadn't been able to interact with the man in public, not when the chance they were being watched was less a risk and more a certainty, but just having the presence of someone Gorou knew, someone pleasantly disposed towards him and with no hidden agendas or cruelty... it had been...

Gorou didn't have a word for it.

"I haven't stayed at the same one longer than five months since high school," Akihiko reminded Gorou.  "Security's getting on my case, and I'm pretty sure I saw one of those corporate spies on the rowing machine the other day.  It's time to move on."

"... I understand," Gorou murmured.

"Hey."  Akihiko set one large, warm hand on Gorou's shoulder, giving him a friendly, gentle little shake.  "Chin up, yeah? That's only the first thing. Mitsuru's got a question for you."

"Akechi-kun."  Mitsuru drew herself back up, clearly forgetting that she'd been trying to not give off an intimidating air.  "There haven't been many opportunities for us to meet in person, but I like to think we've been getting along fairly well these past few months," she began.  Gorou nodded acknowledgement of that, because it was surprisingly true. "I've been deeply impressed by your intelligence, your fortitude, and your progress."

She... she had?

"In your personal development as well as your mission," she clarified, which just made Gorou's ears burn with embarrassed delight.  He couldn't help the little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, though. "I've been giving this serious consideration for quite a while, and rest assured that should you refuse absolutely nothing about your contract or professional relationships would change, but... I believe that you would make a truly excellent Kirijo."

He... she... wait,  _ what? _

"So I would like to adopt you."

Gorou could only stare in shock.   _ Adoption _ ?  She wanted... she wanted  _ him _ ?  To adopt  _ him _ ?  Unwanted, creepy little Akechi Gorou, a  _ Kirijo _ ?

"There are, of course, difficulties and considerations," Mitsuru hedged.  "For the sake of your mission, it would need be a secret adoption-- no announcements, nothing to risk someone looking at my koseki until after you can be safely known as the Kirijo heir."

Nothing to risk someone looking at her koseki.  "... Like a marriage proposal," Gorou said, voice catching in his throat.

Akihiko gave him an amused, accepting look.  "Yeah. It's okay, we've talked about it."

"For all practical purposes, our lives would not seem to change," Mitsuru carried on.  "But you would have the safety net of Kirijo resources should you need them,"  _ should you be survive to be scapegoated, or need to flee early _ , she didn't need to say, "and the knowledge that you are family, on the bad nights."  Which sounded a lot like something she'd learned from Akihiko rather than knowing for herself.  "And it would help my conscience," she finished wryly.

Her conscience.  She was risking  _ everything  _ \-- delaying her marriage, having a blood heir... her reputation and freedom if Gorou got caught.  She'd never be able to deny involvement with Gorou's activities if he was on her koseki... all for... for a shred of conscience about an unwanted orphan that no one had ever lost sleep over...?

Except.  They sometimes already had.  They'd stayed up with him on Skype some nights, not just the time the heat had gone out but others.  The day after Christmas, with delivery of a belated tiny Christmas cake, bright with strawberries. The wee hours of New Year's, with Akihiko half out of a tux and taking an hour to unpin and brush out Mitsuru's hair after an exhausting company party.  Nights when the moon was full, for some reason that had them both melancholy and streaming music nearly a decade old.

They  _ cared _ .

"Kirijo Gorou," Gorou murmured carefully, testingly.  "I think I like it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Japan, the basic unit of civil paperwork is the koseki, a document dating back centuries that delineates head of household, spouse, and children. Head of household can be male or female, and adoptions can only occur as parent-child. The only age limits on adoptions are that the parent must be at least one day older than the child; in the case of adult adoptions, the child must be at least fifteen years old. Gorou's fifteen and Mitsuru is head of household.
> 
> In 2011, I believe it was, it became illegal for anyone to access a koseki except the people listed on it and, like, debt collectors and the census. 20XX is well after 2009, when P3 occurred, so the Kirijo Board of Directors can't get their hands on Mitsuru's koseki no matter how much they whine about getting her married off. (Ohhh are they going to be SO disappointed when she finally DOES. Their valiantly-held delusions that she'll marry a Nice Domineering Rich Businessman, dashed!)
> 
> The vast majority of adoptions in Japan are of adult men, younger sons being adopted as heirs when there are no living offspring suited to inheriting a business. Whether this is from lack of children, lack of sons, or lack of children with any talent at or interest in whatever the occupation is... eh, idk the statistics, but those are the main reasons for something like 90% of adoptions in Japan.
> 
> Other legalities around the koseki are all tied up in why Japan treats orphans like shit and why Gorou is so very badly screwed up and needs help.
> 
>  
> 
> Next chapter will be longer, and I'm heading out of town late this week, so it might take a while. Happy holidays!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AS = Apathy Syndrome
> 
> Mooncat = Artemisia = Mitsuru, because no one would ever suspect her of having THAT codename :D
> 
> OOPS I FORGOT TO SAY SPOILERS for Persona 4: Arena
> 
> Gorou is mostly using surnames for P4 and given names for P3, from familiarity after a year. Fuuka still tends to get called Juno, though. And because I certainly tend to forget:  
> P3:  
> Iori, Junpei  
> Takeba, Yukari  
> Kirijo, Mitsuru  
> Sanada, Akihiko  
> Yamagishi, Fuuka  
> Amada, Ken
> 
> P4:  
> Seta, Souji (Protagonist)  
> Hanamura, Yousuke  
> Satonaka, Chie  
> Amagi, Yukiko  
> Tatsumi, Kanji  
> Shirogane, Naoto

_Shinjuku, Tokyo, March 20XW_

 

Gorou's stomach was sour, growling and queasy at the same time, as he slumped by his little kotatsu and stared at his phone.

The phone lay on the tabletop, silent and still.  It wasn't even angled properly to get the lone ceiling light reflecting off of it like one baleful, accusing eye-- it just sat there innocuously, like the text that'd disappeared upon read-reciept hadn't ever existed.

Another Shadow kill order.  Another one.

(Gorou had hoped this day would never come, but... he knew better than that.  It had been a long time coming, but Shidou wouldn't just _forget_ something so villainous he could use...)

Slowly, Gorou brushed his fingertips across the phone's glossy surface, lighting it up.

He should really take this to Juno.  She was the apparent coordinator of the group, arranging schedules and compiling information behind the scenes, but.

But.

It was close enough to the dinner hour that corporate nonsense should be giving her a breather, and the ink was dry on the koseki paperwork...

_Prince: Murakami Kayo.  She's a reporter. Deadline: March 23_

  
The reply came promptly.

_Mooncat: Prince?  Are you all right?_

  
No hesitation.  Not even an acknowledgement of the information before just asking about _him_.  Before noticing he wasn't okay.

_  
Prince: ... AS order._

  
This time, the reply took a little bit longer.

  
_Mooncat: It's not unusual to survive onset of AS, Prince, particularly when one is in good health.  We have several private clinics we can record her admittance to._

_Prince: But will she even agree to go?  She's a reporter, Okaa._

_Mooncat: Our people are very convincing.  Her likeliest stumbling block will be whatever information she's found to become a target.  Hopefully it will be something that simply annoyed That Man rather than a true news story, but if not..._

 

Think, Gorou, think!  Be useful!

 

_Prince: Well, it's certainly no fault of mine if she had the data under a deadman's switch, I believe the term is._

_Mooncat: I do like the way you think._

 

-0-0-0

It turned out that Murakami Kayo, as well as being bright and nosy, was a fairly good actress.  She drooled, staring blank and unfocused through the 'medical specialist' that Gorou accompanied to Iwatodai Memorial Hospital, as they examined her.

"Definitely another shelling, I believe the news was calling it," the 'doctor' diagnosed with a very skilled air of dismay.  "Such a shame, happening to a woman so young."

And that was that.  The doctors shipped her off to 'a specialized hospital in the country', Shidou's specialist reported Gorou's success, and Shidou assigned two more the next month.

Gorou's mission continued with very little change for almost exactly a year.  Then...

 

_Prince: Problem.  Major assignment._

_Mooncat: Auto-message sent at 3:54: I will be available after 4 pm JST._

 

Gorou recomposed his message while he waited.

 

_Mooncat: Prince?  What's wrong?_

_Prince: My new assignment does not have a name.  I'm to select a suitable target from the pool of Tokyo subway drivers with afternoon shifts, and continue until they frenzy during work hours._

_Mooncat: We can address this issue.  I'll have Juno arrange meetings to work out the logistics.  What is your time frame?_

_Prince: He would like it done within a month._

_Mooncat: Juno is blocking out Tuesday evening for the first meeting, if that is suitable._

_Prince: I will see you then, Okaa._

 

Getting to the meeting was easier said than done.  Gorou didn't have any of the Dark Hour generators -- it was too dangerous to, since it could be identified as proprietary Kirijo technology -- and there was no getting out of Mementos and to the street, as far as they'd been able to find.  Using Shidou's personal Mementos was also out of the question. The sudden crush of water pressure would probably kill Gorou before he could drown, and he couldn't escape if he couldn't tell his phone to let him out.

As for other personal Mementos... they had yet to find one that was feasible to cross through.  They either were too small to overlap Mementos, or they had environments unsafe for human life, or they had roaming Shadows too high for Gorou to handle, and his backup couldn't get in without him.  The app wouldn't copy over to their phones.

 

_Prince: In place._

 

The men's bathroom stall turned dim and dingy.  Its door hung open and warped, half off its hinges, and the toilet in the floor was broken and filled with shattered tile from the back wall.  The plumbing in the bloodstained gap looked good, though, dented but not rusted, and a small gleam of light glowed high up in the joins of the pipes.

No one said the Dark Hour couldn't be triggered by remote, after all.

Gorou plucked the small device out of the plumbing, and exited the -- thankfully scentless -- stall.  A boy Gorou's age was leaning against the cracked sinks, a collapsible spear tucked against his shoulder.

"Amada-kun."

"Hey, Kirijo."  Amada Ken straightened, tucking his phone away even as Gorou felt a little grin tug at his mouth.  (Mitsuru had picked _him_ .  Not Amada-kun, an innocent orphan with years of Persona experience and friendship with Mitsuru, but _him_ .   _Gorou_.)  (He suspected that Amada-kun knew perfectly well exactly what calling him 'Kirijo' made him think, and didn't care about anything but that it delighted Gorou a little bit.  Which was perhaps the strangest thing about all of this.)

"Kirijo-kun!"  Sixty kilograms of bouncy plush hit Gorou's ribs.  "Always beary good to see you! Even in this place!"

Correction, _that_ was the strangest thing about all of this.  "Hello, Teddie," Gorou wheezed. He patted the Junes mascot atop his fluffy blue head.  "Have you been waiting long?"

"Oh yes!" Teddie replied.

"Not really," Amada said, which was definitely a polite lie.  "Long enough that Fuuka-san's starting to get antsy, though."

"Ah.  Hello, Juno," Gorou told the air.

_Good evening, Kirijo-kun_ .  Her voice, as always, was ghostly and soft, filtered through her Persona.   _Do ignore Amada-kun.  The toilets are on a safe floor, so you're all right for a while.  Please, take as long as you need._

Now _that_ was sarcasm, inasmuch as Juno ever used it.

Escaping the station to reach the van, this time parked at a stoplight in the middle of the street just across Hachiko Square, was the same nightmarish running battle it always was.  The Dark Hour was never quite the same way twice: this time, the doors out to Hachiko Square were shut tight and the glass unbroken, and they had to detour around through a newsstand and out its employee door, following Juno's directions and avoiding the fire burning all up one wall where someone in reality was taking a smoke break.

(They got stuck in the break room while Shadows attacked Juno's truck for a full minute.  Ow.)

But finally, finally, Gorou landed against the van's tire well with a thump.  The van bounced under him as Amada and Teddie fired off one last shot each before the doors slammed closed, and the Dark Hour vanished into coppery sunset light.

"We got everyone?" the driver asked.

Amada, Teddie, Juno, himself...  "Yeah," Amada said. "Let's go."

Hanamura grinned and started the truck.  "Good to see you, favorite customer," he told Gorou.

"Likewise, delivery guy."

 

-0-0-0

 

The conference room in a Kirijo Group subsidiary branch was a windowless, narrow, middle-management room with very little space to maneuver around the table in it.  It felt even smaller, packed to the brim with people that Gorou had mostly met only once or twice in the past year -- and one he never _had_ met, a girl with long white hair, red eyes, and the steel helmet and gauntlets of a knight, leaning up against a back wall: Aigis' sister from an earlier production line, Labrys, who'd been on a covert operation all year but was unmistakable out of disguise.

He'd been told the girl... robot... girl... was as irrepressibly cheerful as Aigis was somber.  She didn't look it right now, as intent and tense as the atmosphere of the rest of the room.

Gorou squeezed past people and stepped up to the seat left open for him at Mitsuru's right, which by all rights should have gone to Akihiko except that everyone here knew about Gorou's adoption.  Akihiko had the seat at Gorou's right, and Seta-san -- who had the most Personas Gorou had ever heard of, it was a little alarming that the man was supposedly sane -- had the seat at Mitsuru's left as the leader of the Inaba team.  The two teams alternated ranking after that, with Iwatodai on Gorou's side of the table and Inaba on the other, apparently in order of joining the team.

Most of Inaba was missing.  The two still living in that small town -- neither of whom Gorou had met yet either -- hadn't been able to leave on such short notice, and Risette was far too well-known to risk being seen going into an office building she had no reason to be near.  It was rather the same for Takeba Yukari, whose role as the Featherman leader in the most popular seasons aired had her too recognizeable as well, though considerably less so than Risette.

Labrys took the extra chair next to Shirogane, across from Amada, and Aigis stood at the end of the table with no seat at all.  The pair of them were by no means the lowest-ranking in the room, but Aigis was clearly on guard duty, and Labrys...

Gorou had the feeling that Labrys, for all that she counted more as Iwatodai than Inaba, lacked something the rest of Iwatodai shared.  Something that happened in that long year the team was active, the last year of a natural Dark Hour.

Something Gorou also wasn't in on.

Mitsuru looked out over the teams, then pulled out her chair and sat.  The rest of them followed suit as she steepled her hands, solemn and stern.  "Thank you all for coming. We have intel on the next Shadow mission, and we are going to need all our people on it."  She breathed, and something about her expression seemed to age. "That Man has not given our agent a name, just a job description... for Tokyo train drivers, preferably with afternoon shifts."  Seta, Satonaka Chie, and Shirogane's eyes widened in horror. "The frenzies are to continue until there is a major accident."

"That's _pawful_!" Teddie yelped, over several gasps.  "We have to stop him!"

Shirogane just shook her head.  "We don't have enough evidence yet," she said bluntly.  "We can't even extract you safely, can we?" she asked Gorou.

Gorou shook his head.  "He'll just find other means."

"But--!" Teddie protested.

"Whether we can prevent the incident entirely is not up for debate," Mitsuru said, not entirely unkindly.  "We can't. So, this is a logistics meeting. We must identify and plan for the worst-case scenario, and aim to minimize casualties."

"We also gotta set up tracking the poor guy Kirijo-kun ends up getting," Satonaka said.  "Won't be any good if he crashes the train and none of us were on it to do anything."

Seta nodded.  "We'll also have to test what happens to a moving train during the Dark Hour.  I'm assuming we're going to try to use the Dark Hour for this?" he asked Mitsuru, raising an eyebrow.  "Get people out of the way in a way they'll think was pure luck?"

"It's the only way I can think of," Mitsuru agreed.

Gorou, considering Seta's first comment, said, "You'd think the trains would simply stop dead in their tracks."  They rather had to, logically. "Otherwise people would blink and discover they were sixty kilometers or more away from where they'd been, or there'd have been years of midnight crashes at the terminals."

"Makes sense," Seta agreed.  "Still, best to check."

("Hey, wait," Junpei said.  "What about that time with the freaky Priestess one?"

"That was the Shadow itself animating the car, Junpei," Akihiko replied.  "So I guess we kinda already do know what happens to the trains...? Wait, no, that one was stopped at a station first...")

"We should probably also check that we can move those freaky coffins," Hanamura said.

"And how quickly you can flicker the Dark Hour," Shirogane added.  "Just moving people out of the way once would be ineffective. We need to be able to monitor the way the cars crumple and remove people from the line of fire as the accident proceeds."

"But first we need to... pick a target," Juno said, swallowing.  "I'll analyze traffic patterns and try to find the least busy afternoon line."  She worried at her lip. "It won't be a huge outlier," she warned. "The train schedules are optimized for maximum capacity.  But any little bit helps, right?"

Mitsuru nodded.  "So we have Yamagishi-san analyzing train traffic: we need to see what the trains do during the Dark Hour, whether the coffins can be moved, and if and how quickly we can leave and return to the Dark Hour."

"Testing the trains and coffins can be done by the same person," Shirogane pointed out.  "But we should probably do speed tests with different people for the flicker."

"We're all accustomed to four-man teams," Mitsuru said.  "We can hopefully tentatively plan for at least sixteen people.  Seta-san, you're the," her voice caught almost imperceptibly, "experienced battle leader.  Thoughts?"

Seta considered the table for a long moment, eyes distant.  Then, "Kirijo, Kirijo, Aigis, Sanada." Gorou blinked, surprised that he was surprised.  (It made sense, Aigis was nigh inseparable from her guard duty, and Akihiko had been partnered with Mitsuru the longest-- over half their lives, as far back as junior high.  But to include him...?) "Me, Yousuke, Chie, Teddie." He considered a little longer. "If we can get them," he started tentatively, "Rise, Naoto, Kanji, Yukiko, Labrys. And Takeba, Iori, Yamagishi, and Amada.  The teams have some weaknesses," he added before anyone else could, "like Ice coverage, but we aren't expecting to fight Shadows.  I'm going with synergy more than offense. But if Rise or Takeba aren't available without suspicion... hm. You okay with smaller teams?"

"... Perhaps," Mitsuru said.

"Okay.  Keep yours and Naoto's, change the other two.  Iori, Amada, Teddie. Me, Yousuke, Chie. And set Yamagishi as Navi outside the subway system entirely, perhaps in a car following the route.  Either way, two teams on shift, trading off at terminals, the second team on standby with Yamagishi for when the crash hits, get to the site via the Dark Hour."

Mitsuru nodded sharply.  "Mark that down as the plan," she said, speaking to no one in particular-- so, speaking to Aigis for the notes.  "We can refine it as schedules align. Everyone, be sure to get an appointment in with Iori-san for disguises before mission start.  Are there any other thoughts?"

"Yeah," Satonaka said.  "Whoever goes testing the Dark Hour should make sure they can get between train cars, and take backup in case Shadows pop up.  So like, stay safe, okay?"

Most of the people at the table agreed -- Gorou nodded, but didn't verbally agree, because he couldn't risk having Dark Hour tech and so he wasn't going to be testing it for himself -- and Mitsuru glanced around for any more comments.

None came.

"Keep Yamagishi-san updated on your schedules," Mitsuru said.  "We'll reconvene as soon as is feasible, hopefully next week.  Thank you all for coming."

-0-0-0

 

Gorou tipped his head back for Chidori to paint a last stripe of glue under his jawline, patting it down with the rough shavings from a frayed bit of rope almost the same color as his hair.  The glue pulled and the fake stubble itched, but not badly enough that he couldn't deal for the next four hours.

He had no idea what Mitsuru or the rest of his team looked like, and hadn't yet identified them in previous trips.  They all disguised in different locations, and made their way to the terminal alone. Junpei and Chidori were geniuses, though: the garish clothes waiting for Gorou today only pretended to be eye-catching.  The torn jeans, after Gorou had tried three different pairs on, were tailored badly and were baggy in the seat, which dropped his sex appeal drastically. The hoodie was secondhand, worn slightly fuzzy so that the color registered more as apple than fire-engine red.  A ball cap changed the shape of his face and head, and the bad English written on it and the Tshirt underneath drew attention away from his face anyway.

With the bit of stubble, he looked like a moderately-poor older college student who'd quit caring about his middling looks, rather than an unfortunately pretty boy barely a week into his last year of high school.

"There," Chidori said, putting the stubble brush down.  "Don't scratch at it, and I will hopefully not see you tomorrow."

"Hopefully," Gorou repeated, as he had for the past several days.  He'd frenzied yet another operator's Shadow nearly ten days ago-- surely it had to break through and work on _someone_ during their shift.  He was running out of Shidou's patience, and out of free time to help Mitsuru's team stop the disaster from becoming a tragedy.

Surely it had to happen today.

Hopefully.

What sort of horrible person did that make him, Gorou wondered hours later, staring out the window as the train pulled out of Ebisu.  Hoping a train would crash (horrifically, at that: trains were just too large and heavy to crash without massive losses, even just tipping off the track would throw people all over the cabin and into each other and the poles and seats).

What was Shidou even trying to do?  There had to be better ways to climb the ranks.  This was just... mad cruelty, for cruelty's sake.

The train picked up speed.

... too much speed.

Gorou tensed, eyes flicking up to the window even as they entered the tunnels into Shibuya station.  Of course. Of _course_ .   _Saturday afternoon_.

The train didn't slow, even as the automated announcement intoned Shibuya station, one minute, please wait for the doors to fully open, and passengers began to murmur worriedly, craning their necks to peer out the windows and clutching at the various poles and seat backs.

_Some god..._

They blew past the platform in a flare of light and startled faces.  The rails screamed underneath them.

_... or demon._..

The world flipped green, and Gorou barely caught himself on his seat and a coffin's upper edge as the train came to a screeching, unnatural halt.  None of the coffins so much as shifted in their places, whether standing or wedged awkwardly into the seats at angles, like the one in the seat in front of Gorou.

He went for that one first, since his hand was already on it.  It moved easily on the rounded edge of the seats, and he tipped it onto its side in the aisle.  One standing next to it went down next, angled so that the person's feet wouldn't kick the first coffin's person in the head when reality blipped back in a few minutes.

Three more coffins.  He gave priority to those in the seats, and then the standing coffins when they blocked the way for sitters' coffins to be laid flat.

Five.

Eight.

Eleven, and he hurried to the next train car up, pulling the connecting doors manually open and locking them that way.  People would think they'd been broken open in the crash, and he couldn't afford for them to get stuck closed from warping.

Sixteen people here, with three of the coffins being very small.  One was so tiny, it was actually fused into the top half of another at an angle, the baby inside being carried in someone's arms.  Gorou made sure to set that coffin down with the smaller one uptrack of it, so that the child would only be pressed further into the adult's body instead of being torn from their arms.

Someone knocked at the connecting door to the next train car.  A dark-haired girl with large, concealing black headphones and thick glasses held up three fingers with one white-gloved hand, and a Dark Hour device in the other.

Aigis.

Gorou hit the floor.

Three.  Two. One.

Reality blipped.  A split second of bright noise, physics punching the wind out of Gorou, and the Dark Hour returned with the coffins all nearly a meter further forward in the train car, many tipped up against each other or the various railings and poles in the car, and the car itself starting to tilt underfoot.

Aigis vanished from the connecting door in a swirl of long hair, and Gorou got back to work pulling the coffins into safer positions.

It seemed to be an hour or more, an hour of backbreaking work between blips into screaming, twisting reality, but finally Gorou hovered in what little space was left of the crumpled, sideways train car.  A few of the coffins had their very bases tangled in the seats, and would probably suffer broken legs or even amputations, but he'd done what he could.

Correction.  He picked a jagged shard of plastic out of the rubble, and tucked it flat behind the curled fold of a window's tempered glass, where it would only be smeared over the tunnel's floor instead of flying into someone's throat.   _Now_ he'd done all he could.

And now he just needed to get out.  He couldn't be found here.

Gorou looked up, plotting his route.  Electricity didn't run in the Dark Hour, except on proprietary Kirijo devices, so he'd be safe grabbing onto the torn wiring hanging from the ruined light fixtures.  He could rip them out behind him, as well, and prevent them from grounding through passengers if any were still live. Then... there wasn't much space left in the only window he could see, but he wasn't all that broad across the shoulders.  He could probably squeeze through--

Or Aigis could slide halfway in and shove the metal frame back apart with her feet.  That worked too.

Aigis reached a hand down, and helped lift Gorou through.  "We must depart," she said. "You are uninjured?"

"I'm fine."  She would take that as an answer -- she never remembered that people could lie when she was under stress -- so Gorou added, "I'm just physically tired."

"We shall rest later, then," she said, and led him carefully along the side of the train and off the tracks.  There was a narrow service walkway here, rusted and sticky in the Dark Hour, but it was in good condition, and an alcove splashed with blood held an emergency exit.  Or, rather, an _-rgenc- -xi-_ and a broken, unlit sign above the door.

The exit's stairwell was meant for a frightened, but orderly, mob, and could walk three abreast.  Inside should've had emergency lighting, but instead it was only lit by a tiny Dark Hour flashlight, held by Mitsuru.  (Gorou had seen this disguise several times over the last week, but Mitsuru looked so remarkably different with her hair up off her face and a cold mask on that he hadn't recognized her.  It was only the cold mask that had made him wonder, actually, because the peculiar reds of her cheap puffy coat and knit hat had made her hair look flat brown. Akihiko, he'd been only slightly more sure on: he looked about twice his size, with a paunch under his dockworker's overalls and lifts in thick boots, and somehow he looked about ten years older than he was even with his hair darkened to a salt-and-pepper gray.)

Akihiko whistled.  "Damn, Chidori's good."

As a distraction, it didn't work.  "Let's just go," Gorou replied, tired and tense, refusing to glance back towards the door and the disaster waiting to finish behind it.  "Please."

It didn't take long to reach the town car Juno was waiting in.  Aigis turned off the Dark Hour for the last time, and -- white-faced, hands clammy in each others' grips -- they waited for the car's inset tv to start coverage of the disaster.

(It would take days, but eventually the final casualty report came out: 80 injured, zero dead.

On Skype, Akihiko wobbled with relief, and Aigis had to catch him.  Mitsuru shut her eyes for a long, recentering moment, then turned a heartfelt gaze onto Gorou.  "Good work," she said.

It was nowhere near over yet.  But, with that... Gorou knew he could get through the rest of the mission.

"Thank you."   _For everything_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gorou thinks Souji (P4 Protagonist) is unique because no one can bring themselves to talk about Minato. They're still grieving, mostly because they don't truly have closure. And Aigis doesn't seem to have STAYED a Wild Card after The Answer; she only had her own in Arena. And, of course, Akira is not yet a thing.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not yet had the spoons to watch the anime, so we are going with game canon. Not that this changes much, really. Strap your shipper goggles on and please keep your hands and feet inside the catbus at all times.

Gorou stared up at the giant tv screen looming over Shibuya Square.  The old man on it was bawling, completely broken and confessing to various art and financial crimes.  More interesting, though, were the rumors being whispered among the crowd.

"Phantom Thieves, hm?" Gorou murmured.  Just like with the gym coach last month.  ... Almost exactly a month ago, actually...

Mitsuru and Akihiko always got more melancholy around the full moon.  It wasn't exactly a month -- nearly a week shorter than the period since the coach -- but... something had happened during that year they could barely talk about, something once every month...

It was a ridiculous connection to make.  The Dark Hour's Shadows were completely disconnected from affecting people, unless a coffin broke to let the Shadows eat someone.  The tv world's did the same if they got hold of a real person, but the real person had to fall into the world first. Mementos...

There was a chance that the tv world could do the same as Mementos, but no one was going to try to murder someone to test a theory.  So they couldn't be sure it was at all possible in dimensions other than Mementos. And even then, the way Mementos worked wasn't what had happened to Madarame or that gym coach.

You could force a temporary break from sanity -- Gorou could, at least; no other Persona they knew of had a spell like it -- but it didn't  _ last _ , and it didn't force confessions to crimes even when that was the most insane thing someone could do.  It just sort of... disengaged all the higher functions and let the id go wild.

Gorou couldn't think of a way to make the inverse true.  To... disengage the id and let the superego take over, suppress the Shadow enough to force a cultural moral imprint to take control.  As far as all the Kirijo research could tell, there  _ was  _ no such thing as a superego.

But what else could it be?

His phone buzzed.   
  


_ Juno: Are you seeing the Madarame broadcast? _

_ Prince: Yes.  Why? Do you also think it has to do with the Shadow worlds? _

_ Juno: We strongly suspect.  You saw the police file for the coach.  What do you know about his former school and victims? _

_ Prince: ... Quite a bit.  My co-worker's sister goes there.  She's been... assiduous about the case. _

_ Juno: Goodness.  She would be. _

_ Juno: Will you be available to Skype tonight?  It will be rather late. _

_ Prince: Of course.  My school is under the impression that I must needs miss the occasional period for work, which of course this is. _

_ Juno: Prince, no.  Go to bed and get to school properly.  We can arrange a better time later this week. _

_ Prince: ... If you're sure. _

_ Juno: Of course.  Enjoy the rest of your day, Prince. _   
  
  


It actually took nearly a week to reschedule.

"We saw the interview," Mitsuru said without preamble, peering into the camera concernedly.  "How are you holding up?"

It took a moment for Gorou's body to remember he could let the bitterness flow into his smile.  "Well," he said. "I just had to sit there in front of several dozen of Kamoshida's victims and pretend I didn't recognize their uniforms, publically denigrate their rescuers, and take adulation for my flawless observation skills as my due."

Akihiko leaned into view.  "Does it help that you got called on it?  Or no?"

Gorou felt his smile warm faintly.  "It does, a bit." It wouldn't have just a year ago, and the skin behind his ears prickled with tense heat at the thought.  Would he have been offended? Embarassed? Angry? ... Fascinated, that an ordinary kid would have the audacity to disagree with him in public at all, much less make a coolly snide comment against the police?

Mitsuru and Akihiko glanced at each other with oddly knowing smiles.  Gorou had no idea what that was about. Very strange.

... Speaking of strange.  "It's odd, though," he mused, thinking about the boy.  He'd been very distracted before the interview, and there wasn't anything particularly distinctive about large glasses and messy hair, but the boy's friends were  _ very  _ memorably blond.  "His voice is wrong."

Akihiko blinked.

"... Wrong?" Mitsuru asked.

"I ran into him and his friends in the back halls of the studio," Gorou explained.  "I could have sworn his voice was much higher then." The girl's held a hint of laughter, a slight brashness that would lend itself well to faking an English accent.  The bleach-blond boy's was rougher, nasally. But the third voice he'd heard... "Younger, too."

But on the show, it'd been low and warm.

Gorou shrugged, then smiled sheepishly at the screen.  "Ah, it's probably just circumstance." He'd heard classmates' voices change pitch dramatically based on mood and interest -- especially the girls, they could get very high-pitched while socializing but mutter in a low monotone while reading passages in Literature.  Or maybe the boy's voice was just changing late, though it was a very  _ odd  _ way of cracking if that was it.  "Never mind me. We were going to discuss the Madarame incident."

Mitsuru frowned, but let the topic change.  "Aigis?"

Aigis stepped into the camera field.  "Preliminary analysis indicates it is likely that Madarame-sensei was targeted via the colloquially-known 'Phan Site'.  Requests for the group's services are submitted anonymously to the site, and marked upon acceptance." Her eye color pulsed unnaturally, a mark that she was retrieving an outside file instead of a memory.  "Approximately thirty-three days ago, a request for one Nakanohara-san was accepted. Cross-referencing indicates that he is one of Madarame-sensei's retired students."

Huh.  "... So it's likely that, whatever the thieves did with Nakanohara-san, it brought Madarame-sensei to their attention," Gorou mused.

"It would seem so, Kirijo-kun.  However, it may yet be physical in nature."  Aigis' eyes pulsed again. "There is record of a recent trespassing attempt filed with Madarame-sensei's security company.  Twenty-three days ago."

The press conference had been five days ago.  "Eighteen days strikes me as cutting it a bit close," Mitsuru said.

"Yeah?"  Akihiko shrugged.  "I've run into people who could pull off stuff in an hour."

"And yet they could not locate you a shirt," Aigis replied blandly.  "For over a year."

Akihiko mimed taking a hit and slumped against Mitsuru's shoulder, his head bouncing there as she stifled amusement.

It couldn't be the mysterious final year of the Dark Hour.  Akihiko had been in school for that. But... "Ooh," Gorou said, letting his eyes light up and leaning forward.  "This sounds like a story." Hopefully one they would share so he could glean a little more information about that pivotal year.  "Are there pictures?"

Mitsuru shook her head.  "No, no pictures," she managed to say, even as Akihiko groaned with what theatrics he could muster.  "But Akihiko took a gap year to backpack overseas, and he returned to Tokyo for the Labrys emergency wearing a ratty cape straight from a Hollywood cowboy's costume closet."

"In my defense, I'd torn my shirt and the airport didn't  _ have  _ anything in my size.  I'm lucky the abuela  _ did _ ."  Akihiko hugged Mitsuru close to stop her reply.  "And  _ you  _ were stress-testing leather Ops suits in public."

"We do have pictures of that," Aigis said helpfully.

Gorou had seen some of the Ops tactical suits, and he couldn't imagine Mitsuru in any of them.  The image kept flipping her face over to The Revengers' Red Widow. "Thank you, Aigis," he said over Mitsuru's protest.  "I'll keep that in mind."

"If we could get back to the topic," Mitsuru ordered, cheeks pink.  "Aigis, I want you and Yamagishi keeping an eye on that 'Phan-Site'.  Run background checks on associates of each accepted target. Prioritize high-profile associates: Kamoshida was an Olympic medalist before he was a coach, after all.

"Gorou, keep an eye out for them in Mementos.  Don't make contact yet if you don't have to-- I'd like to keep this subtle until we know what we're dealing with."  Mitsuru's expression darkened. "We want no repeat of Strega."

That much, at least, had been in Gorou's initial briefing.  And no, running unexpectedly into hostiles with unknown powers was not something Gorou wanted to happen to him, with or without backup.  "I'll try to go in when a Phan-Site request has been accepted," he decided, before suddenly having a terrible mental image of trying to track these phantom thieves with, say, Junpei for backup.  "If we could ask stealthier agents to clear their schedules to match mine?"

The corner of Mitsuru's mouth quirked upward.  She perhaps had a similar mental image. "We'll see what we can do."   
  


-0-0-0-

 

'What we can do', when coming from Kirijo Mitsuru, was quite a lot.  She had a rotating lineup of half a dozen teammates loitering on standby during Gorou's downtime in the cafes and galleries of Shibuya Station by the very next morning.  Juno texted their names to Gorou five minutes after his alarm went off, the message deleting itself as soon as he'd read it.

The most difficult part of the operation turned out to be Gorou's schedule rather than anything on the Kirijo side of things.  Between school, interviews, and Shidou's demands, there just wasn't much time left, though Gorou's backup stayed at capsule hotels in Shibuya or took taxis after the last train, just in case an acceptance went through at some late hour.

And so they waited.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIVE.
> 
> For all of about 12 more hours before my next school term starts. Have a very long chapter, because idk the next time I'll have the time and spoons to keep going.
> 
> Also, I'm adapting a thing that did not happen in P4. If you notice, it's artistic license and on purpose.

_PT on the move.  Site request_ _#007964_ _: Kazuya Makigami._

Gorou put his phone back into his pocket and, as the train swayed and clattered underfoot, reconsidered his study schedule.  It was only the start of the big push to exams in three weeks, so... He could let tonight's math repetition slide, and if he took the train the full way to school tomorrow -- which he did occasionally, rarely enough that Shidou wouldn't find out Gorou had an extra income stream --  instead of biking to Shibuya and getting on there, he could do the reading for Literature in transit. Which meant he could spare the hours.

Lucky.  In two more weeks, he would have to sacrifice sleep instead.  Or, worse, study time, which might have a noticeable effect during exams.

... Maybe the thieves had exams coming too...?

More likely they wanted to seem like they did, though.  Or had jobs or family schedules that would be impacted by the upcoming summer break.  Or... it was pointless to speculate, though. There just wasn't enough data to find any patterns yet.

Shibuya Station, when Gorou exited the platforms, was bustling as always.  The crowd skewed rather towards the young and female demographic, students fresh out of school and wives taking a moment out of their days for a breather before picking up children, a fair number of tourists, but it was really only noticeable if you were paying attention.

Gorou's backup fit right in to this crowd.  Today's was a classic beauty admiring the purses on display at a shop, her own bright red leather one accenting a sundress in warm colors on white.  She pretended complete obliviousness and Gorou didn't approach her. Instead, he pretended to check his phone again and headed for the toilets, watching her reflection turn away and follow him after the screen went dark.

He knew exactly where the half-meter square blind spot for the security cameras by the toilets was.  It was just a bit off-center, slightly closer to the women's than the men's, and didn't include the wall.  It was close enough to being in full view that there weren't concerns about trapping someone in place, but a nearby water fountain pushed foot traffic out of the way.  The paired conditions meant it was a poor choice of place for a crime, a waste of money to add another camera, and perfect for Gorou to take a companion to Mementos in.

The woman's telltale purse swayed into view as she bumped into him, and Gorou hit the app.

"Oh, that _is_ odd!" the woman said when they landed.  Her weight shifted oddly as she caught herself on his arm, then let go perhaps a bit too quickly.  "I was expecting it to actually feel like-- well. I don't know!" She straightened up, adopted a professional expression, and bowed.  "Yukiko Amagi, reporting for duty."

"Kirijo Gorou.  A pleasure to meet you," Gorou replied.  Her purse had vanished, along with her bright sundress; it had been replaced by a school uniform accented with houndstooth and gray topstitching, which would be much better for sneaking around Mementos, but she also had a bright red cardigan which wouldn't.

Oh well.  It could've been worse.  Gorou's own secondary cognitive outfit, for example.

But, to business. "I don't know if you've recieved my file...?" Gorou asked.  He'd seen hers -- strong in fire, weak to ice, good at healing -- but they'd never worked together.  Her residence in Inaba was too far away to risk bringing her to Tokyo often or for short assignments.  The length of this one, in the gap between the rainy season and summer vacations where it would be reasonable for an innkeeper to take a long trip, mitigated that.

It did mean that they didn't know how well they'd work together, though.

"I have," Amagi said brightly.  "Two Personas, right? Ice and..." she faltered almost imperceptibly, probably because Loki also was Gorou's murderous Persona, "... Bless and Curse, and some physical damage, I think."

Gorou nodded.  "Well," he said with one of his media smiles, "we match well on paper.  Let's go see how well we can put that into practice."

She nodded, but there was a worrying hesitance under her professionalism as they headed into the blood-tinged depths of Mementos.

"Please, just ask," Gorou said, carefully not looking at her as he peered into the murkiness of the first tunnel.

After a long moment, she sighed.  "... I don't have any sensor skills?"

"Neither did I," Gorou replied.  Navigators -- teammates, really -- were godsends and luxuries.  Gorou knew what to do with luxuries. He tapped the side of his helmet with one clawed glove.  "It's no Juno, but I managed to convince myself this should have a head's-up display."

Never take anything good for granted.  Even now.

"I'm not finding anyone on this floor, but I've only got about 90% coverage, as far as I've been able to tell."  The exit to the next floor wasn't on his visor display this time, at least. Sometimes it was, but there was always an extra room or tunnel he didn't find until he was out of range of the entrance.  So, 90%.

"Well, then."  Amagi rallied easily.  "Let's go, then."

 

-0-0-0  


They searched Mementos for hours, reaching the very lowest floor in fairly short order thanks to Amagi's strength... only to find that the elaborately carved wall that'd been there every time Gorou had come before was gone.

"I've never been past this point," Gorou warned Amagi.  "I didn't know there was anything lower at all."

She raised her eyebrows at him.  "They're opening up new areas?"

"I think so."  That was going to make this search considerably harder.  But there was nothing for it; they had to go on. So Gorou checked his visor was still ready to tear, and his weapons secure but easily freed, and they plunged into the darkness.

This part of the trip took considerably longer than the first: they cleared every floor methodically, canvassing each two or three times to ensure they'd searched every crevasse for the thieves.

Gorou could hear the sound of a badly-tuned engine in the distance, somewhere behind the walls.  He'd never heard the like in Mementos before, and neither had Amagi. It seemed most likely to be the thieves.  Hopefully.

Gorou didn't want to find out what that metallic, coughing rumble was if it wasn't the thieves, wasn't a vehicle they'd somehow managed to find when Gorou never had.  But it was a moot point: the closest he and Amagi ever got to the sound was a dead-end. Backtracking to try to get around the wall, they lost the engine... only to hear chains dragging from the direction they were headed.

"I think we lost him," Amagi said, crouched over Gorou in a stairwell, her face white and glistening at the temples with fear-sweat.  "Ours never came between floors, at least."

"Neither does that one."  Amagi's fan blocked Gorou's view of most of the broken escalator.  Its edge gleamed faintly in the dim light, red-on-red like it was wet with blood.  "But if the thieves don't get out soon..."

"Should we wait here, then?  They have to come this way if they want to get out, right?"

Gorou swallowed.  The way the floors always changed... the way he must've been in range to sense the thieves if he could hear them, but hadn't had any signal, not even for the room or tunnel on the other side of that wall...

"I wouldn't be so sure about that."

What if Mementos didn't have to have all its spaces connected to each other?  Parallel floors, parallel entrances and exits... what if it didn't even have to have just one entrance lobby?  Why would you always land in the same place even if you came from different stations, or from different sides of Shibuya, locations blocks apart?

"... We'll keep watch at the entrance," Gorou decided.  "Until the last train. If they don't come out by then..."  They were either leaving by a different lobby, staying all night or didn't care if they were seen leaving in the middle of the night when the station was dead, or...  "We can keep an eye out for the next major notice and try to get into the Palace."

If there was a next notice.

If they'd survived.  


-0-0-0  


It didn't take long to get proof of life.

Gorou woke just two days later to the news that three blocks of Shibuya and the station had been plastered with thousands of copies of the thieves' trademark red card.

  
_Prince: Police are searching for the print shop that made the cards._  
 _Prince: They think it's too big a job for a home printer._

_Mooncat: Spear obtained one before they were removed for evidence, as did many of his peers._   
_Mooncat: Analysis indicates the card was silkscreened._   
  
_Prince: The thieves did gain the services of a professional artist in May, given the change in logo._ _  
Prince: I doubt the current direction of the investigation will bear fruit._

_Mooncat: I agree._   
_Mooncat: Do you think you can get into the Palace tonight?_   
  
_Prince: Of course.  The target happens to be an associate.  His keywords are obvious._   
  
_Mooncat: Be careful.  What do you need for backup?_   
  
_Prince: Stealth.  I can't be certain about physical skills prior to seeing the Palace._

_Mooncat: She'll meet you behind the Featherman promotion stall at 7 pm._

 

Even half-expecting it, Gorou nearly dropped his phone when Takeba Yukari popped out from the curtained-off area behind the autograph stall in Hachiko's Square.  "Oh! Sorry!" she said cheerfully, half a whisper. "I didn't see you there-- ack, forgot my purse." And she spun back into the stall in a whirl of tea-blonde hair and white summer cardigan, leaving a sparkle of silver behind on the floor.

Gorou picked up the bracelet.  The clasp was in good condition, the size too small for his wrist-- it shouldn't have fallen off Takeba's.  "Takeba-san?" Gorou stepped through the curtain as well. "You dropped this..."

She winked and wiggled her phone at him, even as she held out her hand for him to drop the bracelet into.  He triggered the app when it hit, and they landed in a moonless, trash-strewn Shibuya.

"Kirijo-kun, right?  Nice to meet you, finally!"

Takeba's clothing hadn't changed the way Amagi's had.  Under her white cardigan, she had on a black T-shirt with Feather Pink's Wing stylized with artistic swirls and silver leafing, and a matching choker.  What had changed was her purse: the white strap now fit snug, holding a quiver and bow to her back.

"... Likewise," Gorou managed.

She nodded, clearly used to star-struck fans.  Even if Gorou was a bit older than the ones she'd just been meeting.  "So!" She pulled her bow and looked around. "Where are we, anyway?"

"A crimelord's personal bank."  She wrinkled her nose, so Gorou added, "As far as he's concerned, anyway."

"Scum.  My favorite."  She eyed the skyline warily, then dropped her gaze to street level, where in the distance a few boxy things were wandering.  "You bring the nicest meeting gifts, Kirijo-kun."

"I do have a reputation to live up to," Gorou replied.  Banter. He could do banter. Even with _Feather Pink_.  "Now we just have to find the Palace proper, and the Shadow."

Takeba didn't blink, gaze flicking towards the blind alleys although most of her attention was on the boxy things slowly wandering closer.  "This isn't it? The Palace thing?"

Gorou let her watch the boxy things, turning away so he could keep an eye on their backs.  "The cognitive world stretches farther than the Palace, mostly to give it a sort of setting or staging area.  One's place in the world is as important to cognition as how you see that place working, if that makes any sense."  She made a soft, affirmative sound. "All right. So, since this is recognizably Shibuya, the Palace itself... we're looking for a very ostentatious bank, something that dominates the landscape instead of fitting into it."

Something shifted in the dark alley to the side of the street.  Another boxy thing, one Gorou hadn't quite realized was the same as the ones down the road until it moved.  It... looked like some sort of ATM with legs.

And here Gorou had been more expecting walking wallets.  Must not hold enough money for Kaneshiro's taste.

At which point Gorou realized that it wasn't the ATM that was moving.  It was the light source. He looked up.

"... Takeba-san."

"Hm?"

"I think I've found the bank."

"... Ohhhh now that's just not _fair!_ "

 

-0-0-0  


"Okay," Takeba murmured after a few foot-stampings, and a quiet casual walk-not-jog to hide them in the newsstand by the station entrance after her outburst brought the ATM things wandering closer.  "What's the highest building in that thing's path, do you think?"

Gorou blinked.  "Ultramarine Tower, I suppose."  Which they would be able to see from literally any other point in the square, oddly enough.  Then, "Right, we should at least try to get a closer look."

Takeba nodded sharply, nocked an arrow onto the bow -- just in case -- and they crawled over the counter, careful not to slip on the strewn papers.  There wasn't much in the way of cover once they were out of the stand; a few straggly bushes, some boxy piles in about the same places that homeless beggars in the real world would be, and then the street tunnel under the station's aboveground walkway opened out onto a deserted six-lane roadway.

Gorou's hand whacked into Takeba's as they both grabbed for the other's arm.  A couple of silent steps back, Gorou pushing Takeba that bit farther behind him to hide her white cardigan, and they watched warily as the bank cruised overhead.

It cleared Ultramarine Tower easily, but Gorou couldn't tell by how much.

(How on earth had the thieves gotten up there?  ... Had they managed it at all? Surely they'd do reconaissance before sending out their notes.)

Once the faint light returned and held steady, there was no movement in Gorou's field of vision to be seen.  The ATMs, if there'd been any on the empty road, had apparently fled the bank's shadow.

Gorou tipped his head sharply forward.  "Let's go."

Ultramarine Tower's doors were locked.  The glass panels were broken, though, and the security shutters were dented and stuck in place in what was left of the transom window above.  Gorou knocked the rest of the glass out of the frame with the back of his claws, flexed his hand to get any fragments out of the workings, then -- "I beg your pardon" -- lifted Takeba over the glass and into the lobby proper.

The elevators were, of course, broken.  Not that Gorou wanted to trust an elevator in the cognitive world.  The stairwell tucked discreetly around the corner from the elevator bank, though, had a fire door.  Heavy metal, a window too narrow to squeeze through even if Gorou could punch through the mesh-reeforced glass, and a locked handle.

"... I don't suppose you brought picks?" Takeba asked.

"Unfortunately, this was not something I'd anticipated."  The doors in Palaces always had either keycards or puzzle locks to get through them, and Mementos of course didn't have doors as such.  "I don't think a hair pin is going to be sturdy enough, either."

"I'm not wearing any of those, anyway."  Takeba frowned at the door, fingering her quiver's strap.  "... What's your opinion on explosives?"

"You are my favorite Feather."  


-0-0-0

 

There were no Shadows in the spiraling, dimly gold-lit concrete box of the fire stairs, as far as Gorou's head's-up display said.  It was fortunate since, even with Gorou's sturdy boots being soft-soled, and Takeba's shoes being simple sneakers, the stairs echoed loudly with every footstep.

Not that Takeba's _explosive arrow_ hadn't signaled to every potential Shadow in a half-kilometer radius.

"So.  You just... carry high explosives in your pocket."

"They came with the Amazing Disappearing-Reappearing Bow."  Takeba glanced over the railing into the murkiness down the center of the stairs, back the way they came.  Just in case. "But if they hadn't, Kirijo-san _is_ set on making sure we have all the weaponry.  It's even almost street-legal!"

"Why don't I have pocket bombs," Gorou asked the stairs above them.

They continued to climb.

 

-0-0-0

 

"Ugh, this is worse than Tartarus.  I'm getting dizzy."

"At least there's only twenty more floors to go?"

"I _really miss_ the creepy teleporter right now."  


-0-0-0  
  


Finally, they reached the roof.  Before Gorou could check the door, Takeba shot the lock with another explosive arrow.  Insulation and dust of dubious origin rained down on their heads, and they burst onto the roof coughing with Takeba batting furiously at her hair.

"Oh gross, gross, _gross_!  I take it back!  Tartarus was cleaner!"

Gorou wouldn't know, of course.  "Well, it worked," he pointed out.  "And we probably won't catch plague off whatever might've nested in the dirt here." Takeba made an even more horrified sound.  "Coin purses, most likely."

She paused.  "... Coin purses."

"Or piggy banks, but those tend to be a bit larger," Gorou said in all seriousness.

"... I... actually can't tell if you're joking or not."  She let her hair fall and straightened, giving one last cough into a tissue she tried to toss aside unnoticed.  "So where's this... ah." She pointed off vaguely westward. "The bank."

Gorou tapped his head's-up display, and the various lights and lines on it turned off.  Without the distraction, he could easily see the UFO outlined in its own lights a few kilometers away.

He couldn't see the topside.  Strike one for it being nearly level with the rooftop, then.

Now, which way was it...?  It didn't seem to be moving relative to anything on the horizon, so... directly toward or away from them.  Given it'd flown slowly away from the tower heading northeast when they were on the street, it should be approaching.

"I hope you brought rope," Takeba said abruptly.

Gorou raised one sardonic eyebrow at her, not that she would be able to see it, and spread his arms to display his striped cognitive costume and its distinct lack of pockets.  She snorted. "Point taken."

Rope, rope... Gorou paused.  "One moment," he said, sucked in a breath, and ducked back into the haze-filled stairwell.  Kaneshiro didn't need to have ever been in this building or ever think about it to subconsciously know that... aha.  Yes. Fire equipment, right where anybody would expect it, and unlocked for obvious reasons.

"Will the fire hose do?" he asked as he dragged the heavy plasticized canvas back out onto the rooftop.

Takeba considered it, taking a loop and weighing it in her hand, fingers rubbing against the material.  "Is it attached inside?"

"... Inside the hose, or to the building?"

"To the building."

"Yes?"  Which would be a problem if Takeba was planning what he thought.  It'd be fairly even chances whether the arrow's catchpoint or the hose attachment to the tower would break first, but either way, if they were trying to climb at the time... splat.  "I'll go cut it loose."

Takeba cast him an approving smile, and turned to the task of tying the nozzle end to her arrows.

The result, when Gorou got back and lent his hands to the task, was more a tangled mess knotted around three arrows, with the center one threaded through the entire hose and out the nozzle, but Takeba swore she could shoot the disaster.  Even better, it did hold when they threw it over the stairwell's roof and hung on it from both sides. So at least it could take their combined weight.

If worst came to worst, they could let it go before they were pulled off the roof.  It would only take about another hour or two to get back down to the street and search Shibuya for a store that sold rope.  Hardware or sporting goods would have something.

If they needed to.  Which they might, Gorou thought, as he eyed the UFO on final approach.  It looked to be easily five stories higher than the rooftop, perhaps six.

"You cannot seriously expect to hit the bank from here," he said flatly.

Takeba nocked the disaster and took aim.  "'All my life, people have been telling me to believe in myself, that that's all I need to do anything'," she said, much to Gorou's surprise.  "'It started to sound like a lie after a while... that they just wanted to be able to blame me for not trying, for not working hard enough, if I didn't prove it with success.'"  The bow creaked in Takeba's hands. "And so I started to think..."

"... why should I bother.  Why should I try at all, when I'll just be ignored when I win,'" Gorou finished Feather Pink's quote bemusedly.  "'Because I only had to believe in myself, and that's so easy a baby can do it.'"

Takeba fired.

The disaster arced across the smooth curve of the UFO, a flicker of shadow against eerie green side-lights, and caught.  Takeba grabbed onto the rapidly-unspooling rope, and Gorou hastily caught it as well when her feet left the rooftop and she didn't fall.

Takeba watched him as they rose, her arm and leg coiled in the rope, one eyebrow raised and her hair blowing over her face.  "'I don't remember being a baby,'" she called down, Feather Blue's placid words instead of her own character's. "'Do you?'"

_I don't have to believe in myself_ , Pink had explained after the episode's fight scene, what her brother had made her realize.   _I just have to do what I can.  And maybe... maybe, it'll be more than I think._

Like shooting an arrow far higher than could happen in the real world.  Gorou grinned. "I don't," he agreed. And, digging his claws into the heavy fabric, he began to climb.  


-0-0-0

 

Shouting and metallic rumbling covered their entrance into the deepest sanctum, once they finally got there following the trail of opened doors and general confusion the thieves had left in their wake.

"... I see we've found the piggy bank," Takeba muttered from their perch, crouched in a dark corner of the security catwalks.  "They grow 'em big down here."

Gorou kept a hand clamped on her leg, careful of his claws.  "We don't interfere," he replied, leaning in close so she could hear him as the thieves' weapons ricocheted off the piggytank.  The ammunition wouldn't reach up here; the two of them couldn't see anything that small and fast-moving, so they would never expect a hit to land.  "Not unless they're about to die."

Takeba nodded sharply.

They couldn't risk showing Mitsuru's hand before knowing the thieves' true character and motives...

... though that was an _awfully_ familiar figure staggering back to her feet to summon a self-driving motorcycle of a Persona, wasn't it.  Not at all the brittle, demure body language Gorou knew of her, and certainly not the silhouette of skirt and vest, but... yes, yes that _was_ Niijima Makoto nuking a fly.

Shuujin connections, all the police theories said.  So going by that, and how he'd had nearly a sixth of that school in the audience the day he'd met that gray-eyed boy...

No.

But the two blond(e)s behind the leader were unmistakeable, dyed spikes and natural ash-blonde pigtails.

Gorou's eyes dropped to the short thing throwing a low-level healing at Niijima.  He had no idea what that was, but... that was a high-pitched and oddly young voice yelling Diarama, wasn't it.

Niijima.  The blonds.  The high voice.

Gorou dragged his gaze to the leader in rising horror.  No. No, not the gray-eyed boy, not one of these thieves, not... not mixed up in this _mess_ , please, no...

The leader tore off his mask, hair raking wildly over his blood-red gloves.  " _Principality!_ "

It couldn't be.  It _couldn't_.  Not that ferocity, not that shouted growl, not the dramatic sweep of red gloves and flaring leather tailcoat.  Not in the calm, quietly amused boy from the audience.

It couldn't.  And if Gorou was wrong about the leader... he must be wrong about the rest of them.

So who were they?

Gorou bit his lip, watching as the thieves fought the Shadow to a standstill, to a collapsed and sobbing defeat.

"Now hurry up and return to the real Kaneshiro," a blue-haired thief Gorou didn't find familiar at all ordered.

"Seriously?"  Kaneshiro's Shadow blustered about the thieves' manners (Gorou and Takeba shared a quick, incredulous glance at that) and how much money they could make off their powers--

"We're not like you!" the spiked-blond yelled.

Familiar.  Too familiar.  But it _could not be_... unless they were friends with some other messy-haired student?  The color and cut were pretty common, and if you just had a good styling product and some skill...

"You know, there's already someone out there taking _full_ advantage of what Palaces have to offer..." Kaneshiro's Shadow said slyly.

_Shit_.  And he didn't dare show himself in case it got back to Kaneshiro, and Takeba wasn't masked at all...

"I'll let you in on a little something... There's a criminal using other people's Palaces to accomplish whatever they damn well please."  The Shadow smirked. "They don't care about consequences. Frenzies, shellings... anything goes."

Takeba's hand clenched on Gorou's arm.

"-- same person Madarame's Shadow spoke of...?" the blue one was asking, before Spike-Blond yelled for Kaneshiro to 'spill it'.

Kaneshiro just snickered as he started to fade.  "Don't even bother. You're nothing compared to them... Better be careful... A chance encounter with them could prove... fatal."

There went Gorou's chances of approaching them without a lot of precautions.  Dammit, dammit, dammit--

Kaneshiro's Shadow winked out, and the bank shuddered as if an earthquake had hit it.

Gorou and Takeba fled.


End file.
